A Cake Story

"I'll make the cake," I'd said with complete confidence to my friend, and co-hostess of an upcoming baby shower. I've made shower cakes before (well, one), and it just wasn't that big of a deal. It would just be simpler than having to order one, I thought.

Plan A (and there was no Plan B)
I would bake the cakes (6-it would be a 3 tiered white cake with cream cheese filling) on Thursday night, decorate them on Friday, and finally pull my professional-looking, homemade-tasting cake out of my fridge on Saturday just as the other hostesses were arriving.

They would compliment my work, then suggest we center all of the posed pictures around the cake, and the mother-to-be, of course. Certainly there would be many requests for Barb's Homemade Cakes, many of which I would have to decline, simply because of time restraints.

I HATE it when this happens-and it ALWAYS happens when I become prideful. Oh how I love to be humbled...

Plan B? Anyone? Plan B?
Well, the cake was in the background, hidden behind the ladies as they posed for pics. And no one was more pleased than I to have it temporarily hidden from view. I wanted to cut it in the laundry room and bring it out one slice at a time. Ugh.

Right from the beginning, this cake was a prime candidate for cakewrecks.com.

First, I baked 4 of the cakes. The 8" cakes were just perfect. After allowing the cakes to cool for 15 min. on my cake rack, I dumped the 10" cakes out of the pans and onto the rack. About a fourth of one cake remained in the pan and the other cake had a serious crack. My panic was all internal for about 5 minutes, in which I reminded myself we were still 2 days out and I could redo it...no big deal. Brian was called in for moral support and he later helped me piece each cake back together and secure it in saran wrap, then into the fridge they went.

On Friday morning I bought 2 more boxes of white cake mix so I could bake the 6" cakes and another 10" to replace one of the botched cakes from the day before.

By 4:30 that afternoon I'd called Brian to bring me 2 more boxes.

The 3rd 10" was a total bust and had to be scraped out of the pan directly into the trash. (Mom suggested I save it for crumbled cake w/ icing as an easy dessert, but I was so disappointed that I needed the satisfaction of just dumping the thing.) Both 6" cakes were almost as bad.

With my 3rd 10" in the trash, I got the others out of the fridge to see what I could do.

I'd made my filling, which was-I now know-just a little too soft. I could use it to glue the cakes back together. I stacked the first tier, filling and all, on my cake stand and stepped back to have a look at the most damaged side, which I'd patched with filling. Before I'd even set my feet a muffin-size piece fell right off the other side and onto the counter. Ugh! Luckily I'm an avid Ace of Cakes fan so I knew (Ha ha ha ha!) I could cover the disaster w/ icing; just like they do on the show.
Tier 1 of the 'disaster,' awaiting a full coat of icing.

The rest of the patching, decorating, camouflaging can be summed up rather quickly. I ended up not using the 6" cakes at all, as they were majorly slanted and had filling bulging out even after many 're-forming' exercises.

So, I had a 2 tier cake that was somewhat lopsided with uneven everything. It was soooo ugly that I asked Brian to take a look and give me his thoughts. "Well, lets just say you've done better work," was all he had to say. (Look, being the straight-forward girl I am, I would've been mad if he'd been anything but honest.)

At that point (late Friday night) there was really nothing we could do. As we looked at this mound of cake, filling bulging from both tiers, I asked Brian another question. "Is it disrespectful-ugly to have this cake for Lauren?" "Probably not," he said, a bit hesitantly, and then promptly reminded me that it would taste good, which really was the point. If I had anything going for me, that was it.

The next morning when my friend and fellow hostess, Jenna, arrived, I laid it all out for her. Well, not only is Jenna a professional level baker (oh, the embarrassment), but she is also a floral designer. She agreed to work her magic on the disaster with any extra greenery we had.


Here she is, in all her gooey glory. In this case the camera makes a really bad thing look surprisingly not as bad. Don't be fooled.

Most importantly, the shower went off without a hitch and we all had a blast celebrating with Lauren. :) Once it had been sliced 6 ways from Sunday, I relaxed and had a great time.

After those few days of stressing over the cake that didn't matter, I was glad to have a date Saturday night with Brian. We went to dinner and a movie with friends and, you'll be shocked-absolutely shocked-to know that I threw caution to the wind and let my head rest directly on the seat back at the Cinemark that night.

Next time I'll stick to mints and nuts.